Thursday 18th January, 6.30 pm, York Library. The launch of Mike Di Placido’s collection Crow Flight across the Sun, a series of poems dedicated to the memory of Ted Hughes. Guest reader Carole Bromley.

Mike Di Placido’s collection Crow Flight across theSun, a tribute to Ted Hughes,will be officially launched on Thursday 18th January, 6.30 pm, at York Library, Library Square, Museum Street, York, YO1 7DS. There will also be a guest reading by York poet Carole Bromley. As if that’s not enough, there’ll be wine and nibbles at the bar. Don’t miss all this. Lighten the January darkness.

I can’t remember when I enjoyed a book of poems so much; possibly ‘Season Songs’. Keith Sagar (on Di Placido’s ‘Theatre of Dreams’)

Shrewdly, comically, with Blakean innocence, Mike Di Placido writes about enthusiasm and inspiration: how in practice we read poetry and fall in love with it. Ed Reiss

In these poems Ted comes alive again, he lives and breathes. These poems are healing gifts. Mark Hinchliffe

Charlotte Wetton’s I Refuse to Turn into a Hatstand, published by Calder Valley Poetry in March,has been awarded the Michael Marks Pamphlet Prize for 2017 at a ceremony in The British Library. Charlotte had been one of five poets shortlisted from the original entry of more than 130.

Announcing the result, Chief Judge Ruth Padel said, “… we chose Charlotte Wetton’s I Refuse to Turn into a Hatstand, published by Calder Valley Poetry, a very small very new press which started business two years ago. We chose it for its assured craft, its emotional and imaginative conviction across a really wide range of forms and tones, and for its lovely language – fresh, direct, powerful and elegant, all at once. The poems are poised and brief but each feels like a small miracle. Indelible images of restraint, powerlessness and loss dominate, but it’s not all grim: Wetton writes with wit, too. She is particularly adept at observing the refrigerated stillness of office life, the draw of the exotic, and how, even in sex, genuine connection is fraught and far from guaranteed. ”

Charlotte (centre) flanked by her mother, Jeni, to her right, and Ruth Padel.

Charlotte Wetton’s I Refuse to Turn into a Hatstand is one of five pamphlets shortlisted for the £5,000 first prize in the Michael Marks Awards. The winner will be announced at a dinner at the British Library on Tuesday 12th December.

Copies available from the ‘Bookshop’ page of this website.

For further details of the shortlist, follow this link – https://wordsworth.org.uk/poetry/poetrypamphlets.html